Blocked Paths and Progression Abilities

Well, if Alucard could become a fog... maybe Miriam could morph into some kind of glittering magic quartz sand that the crystals might be made of...

It's a little early to talk about it in detail, but there are certain moves/items required to enter certain areas. Whether these features are absolutely required, I'm not sure. We could assume it would be similar to past Igavania games.

I will Copy paste this from the "You found a secret room" thread:

I like secret areas in games and of course in Castlevania. Breakable walls that reveal a hidden room or a item and puzzles that opens a room, yup they add a lot to the experience and I want to see lots of them in Bloodstained including those areas that require a certain item or ability to reach.

Wow, a staff member answered on my topic. I'm honored

I think sequence break are good for power ups, weapons and such, but it is terrible for story and plot-wise. So, there is a need for hard locks. Soft locks can exist to block player from reaching power ups that can't be used to break the game's plot sequence.

Different Igavanias are kind of on different places on this spectrum (hard vs soft) so I was just kind of curious in which direction Iga has moved as a designer, especially in the past 8 years, and how that may influence the design of Bloodstained. Perhaps its too early to be asking this question? Well hopefully a good balance is struck. I think the virtues of both types have already been discussed in here so I guess we'll see where the chips fall.


A) Your argument for hard locks seems to come down solely to tradition (unless I've misunderstood you?). I don't think that's a particularly compelling argument, especially given that there are legit reasons why you might want to have some some number of hard locks as Pure Miriam pointed out.

B) It's not usually cut and dry but the balance has to be something you think about and consider early in development. You usually want strong narrative moments to be controlled by hard locks but if you have too many, it can make the world feel especially artificial, stymie exploration and significantly reduce replayability. Compare and contrast the design of Super Metroid vs Metroid Fusion. Hard locks are generally just less fun. Perhaps my memory is off but I'd consider SOTN one of the softer-locked games Iga has worked on so I'm a bit surprised you have preference for hard locks. 

I feel like SOTN actually has the perfect mix of hard lock and soft lock which is why I said a good mixture of both. There's certain areas where you can't progress unless you have a certain ability and other abilities you can just go in early but get dominated.

I genuinely love both. My answer is influenced by SOTN in that SOTN is about variety and I love variety.

I didn't really knew this concept of soft-locks and hard-locks, but i think it is a good way of describing this kind of lock. Just want to add more two cents to the discussion:

About Soft Locks VS Hard Locks
As i said before, hard locks are mandatory to stop the player from breaking the game's plot sequence.  They must be there. Of course, there are hard locks that also block things like power ups, weapons, powers and such, but i think this is also good to stop the player from being overpowered. Soft locks are really a thing for speed runners and people that like to explore and force the gameplay to it's limits, wich is something that also must exist, there are a ton of speed runners and players that love to discover those things. So, i think that it must have a equilibrium between hard locks and soft locks, with a little more soft locks than hard locks.
About the progression context
As crocodile said before,  i do agree that most of those locks must be inside a context, of course this is sometimes impossible, but let's take an example that i already said earlier.
On Aria of Sorrow, Soma Cruz has the power to absorb souls from demons and use them as powers. Then you have something called by some fans, as "Soul Holder", a type of...lamp post thingy containing a soul for absolutely no reason. They just didn't want to put that soul on a boss (like Dawn of sorro did with most progression souls) or didn't want to make an enemy for it and there is quite a few on the game. Then you have Galamoth Soul, that gives you the ability to "see places where time has stopped". There is a single place "where time has stopped". Without the soul, you always go back at the beginning of that place. With the soul ON, you just need to walk there and that's it. So, the soul is basically a key disguised as a soul power. That is not good.

Relics was magical itens that could do anything. You can use that easily for any purpose. But if you want to put a progression ability ON A POWER of the main character, it is much better if that power has a little better context on it, like the dark crow wings of Shanoa, that match perfectly with her dark appearance, or Alucard Mist form that could traverse some special walls.

As i said before, of course it doesn't need to have that on all things, it is something hard to do. A key here, a lock there, a switch over there, is something always needed.

I'd argue that they should be there on a first or "clean" playthrough, but absolutely don't have to be -- and preferably wouldn't be -- on subsequent playthroughs. The player already knows the story, it's ok if they see or do things out of order. One of my biggest frustrations in previous Igavania games is when new game+ takes away rapid movement abilities. I end up rushing through the game to reclaim those abilities, because it's painfully slow to move around without them once you've experienced them.